Country music should take a lesson from Merle Haggard

Just over five years ago, country music lost its greatest gift: legendary singer/songwriter Merle Haggard.

I remember that April 6 day well, sitting in my high school freshman history class on my phone when I got the news via text.  

Years later, I still relish the impact the Hag had for so many years on country music. But now it seems his influence has left the mainstream; no longer do we have a ‘poet of the common man,’ but poets of fairy tales and lies about the human condition. 

These days, country musicians don’t sing about life’s struggles. They sing about getting drunk on planes, jacking up their trucks, drinking one more margarita and a few more beers with their girl on a dirt road.  

They sing in automated tones because they can’t moan the lows and yodel the highs. 

They swap strings for computer generated sounds.  

They sound more like pop, rap, and hip-hop artists. Though at least pop and hip-hop artists stand up for things they believe in through their song writing.  

Indeed, turn on 97.5 FM and you won’t hear many artists singing about their “Fightin’ Side,” “What Happened” to America, or the “Little Man” that built this town before the big money shut him down.  

George Jones had a point in wondering “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes.” By ‘their’ he meant the country musicians who wrote about things that mattered, like life’s hard and good times. Unfortunately, his question wasn’t answered, and today just a few country musicians are still writing music for the common man. 

Cody Johnson is one musician still writing songs about simple stories created as life unfolds. 

Turnpike Troubadours is a country band from Oklahoma, a newer group keeping their song lines full of pain, happiness and whole truth.   

Less well-known, from Texas, is Flatland Cavalry, the group still sings about “Tall City Blues” and discusses feelings of “Homeland Insecurity.”  

It’s a shame that so many of today’s other country musicians have discontinued the conversation of life that defined country music; with that said, there is hope in some unconventional country musicians’ attempt to return the genre to the common person. 

Eric Church is one well-known country musician opposing the direction of his genre. Last summer he challenged his colleagues, in a clear message, to look at what matters in “Stick That in Your Country Song.” Not necessarily a push for social change like other genres attempt, the song was a call to consider the challenges regular Americans are facing.  

That sort of consideration defined Merle Haggard’s music, from his first songs to his last recording titled “Kern River Blues.” With that in mind, country musicians must serve justice to Haggard by carrying on his legacy through musical conversation about life’s challenges – no matter how mundane they may seem.